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Thursday, January 22, 2015

LOCO Film Festival: Lost In Karastan (2015)

Emil Forester (Matthew Macfadyen), a filmmaker living in London suffering from
director’s block gets a phone call one day from Chulpan (Myanna Buring), a mysterious woman from the ‘autonomous republic of
Karastan’ described late in the film as “a woman with many layers, each on a
surface”.She invites him to visit the
country and attend the Palchuk Film Festival, where on arrival he meets the
eccentric, and drunk, local celebrity Xan Butler (Noah Taylor).

Emil thinks that he is there to
introduce his previous films, but instead Chulpan has arranged a meeting with
the charismatic dictator President Abashiliev, who wants him to direct the
inspiring epic story of Karastan’s national hero with the unpredictable Xan.Uneasy about his obvious outsider status,
Emil tries to understand the history and mythology of the country, but just
feels more and more alienated…

A lot of jokes are made about the scale
of corruption: from the obvious ‘problems’ at border control that require a
cash bribe, to the much funnier moment when a security guard checks Emil for
weapons at the presidents palace immediately after an initial check in case
“the last guy put a gun on you”…Eastern
Europe and Russia have always been easy targets for British comedians, but the
film is played straight with a dark humour instead of relying on (only)
funny-accented caricatures.

The film is shot on location in Georgia
and has a dramatic and realistic visual style, which makes the awkwardness feel
more like the dark TV classic The League
Of Gentleman than the more obvious comparison Borat movie.

One of the funniest and darkest moments
occurs early on where Emil is dragged off of the street into a dark room where
a spotlight is shone on him, blinding his view of the audience.Only when the film begins does he realise
that the totally wrong audience are about to watch his very inappropriate film…

A comedy about film festivals is the
perfect way to open a comedy film festival programme.And for anyone with an interest in film pre-production/production
there are plenty of funny scenes and dialogue about casting, locations and
scriptwriting, and then the inevitably amateur film shoot itself.

It is definitely not the funniest film
that you will see at this years festival, but writer/director Ben Hopkins has made a really gripping film about
individual and national ego and although essentially a classic fish-out-of-water
comedy, is a dark and funny insight into filmmaking and storytelling.

Lost in Karastan is the opening gala film for the 2015 LOCO Film Festival and plays Thursday 22nd at BFI Southbank